Talk:United States Numbered Highway System

US:US Redundancy?

US:US? That seems a little redundant. I know we're using US: as a quasi-namespace for state routes, and (apparently now) Interstates, but I don't know of a technical reason we need to call it US:US. The numbered routes are the original U.S. route network. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 21:18, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I'd say the US:US is for consistency. Considering it's the middle tier between the Interstates and the state routes, having it as simply US would seem to imply that the original US route network is somehow more significant than the Interstate network and all the states' individual networks. You could argue that it's more significant because it's the oldest, but many states already had state route networks before the US route network came into existence. Vid the Kid 21:44, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Historic routes

There should be a section for significant historic routes. Yes, some of the significant historic routes are already covered, as they are National Scenic Byways, but not all of them. The Lincoln Highway is only a National Scenic Byway in Illinois, but that historic road is definitely much longer. The Dixie Highway is not in the NSB program at all. So I would like to expand the National Scenic Byways section to also include other significant historic routes. Vid the Kid 21:48, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Splitting relations

Why are there now multiple relations entries for several states? I see the recent edits by NE2...but I don’t see the point. Did someone say somewhere that relations should be split at state borders or something? --Hawke 18:28, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Some mappers expressed concern that editing some of these highways was taking forever, due to the massive number of members in some of these relations. As a Potlatch user, I'm not thrilled to be seeing super-relations all over, but I guess it'll make things easier to manage in the long run. Splitting relations at state lines is pretty much an arbitrary decision, by the way. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 07:08, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, I knew that splitting at state borders was arbitrary, but if we’re going to split it that’s the sensible place. My only concern was that I only see comments along the lines of “we might want to consider splitting some relations at some point,” and nothing saying we were definitely going ahead and doing that, or under what circumstances the ways should be split. It also didn’t help that I misread NE2’s changes slightly. --Hawke 16:44, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

It might be useful to consider whether relations over a certain number of members would be useful to split. For instance, might consider relation chunks of 500 members — if 500 is handled reasonably well by all users with respect to performance. I think that a performance-based split would be better than a state-by-state split. However, in a performance-based split, the split itself should happen at a state border. For instance, might have a segment that crosses Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, with the split points at the Iowa and Indiana borders. If the performance issues are only for a small subset of folks, I think the issue could be handled another way, such as only downloading (to JOSM) members mapped to a certain state or group of states. --Ceyockey 00:21, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I prefer spliting at state borders except in occasional cases where the sections in another state are so short it would be silly. For example, when i did the I-88 relation for NY, i included the short PA segments. i'm generally finding that JOSM starts to seem a bit sluggish when i am dealing with the larger relations in NY. -- nfgusedautoparts 00:04 10 January 2010 (UTC)

For the record, the only one I split was US 1 in Florida, which is longer than Washington to Boston. The other changes in the table were to make it sortable (specifically so you can sort by progress). --NE2 02:44, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorting

What use is sorting on this page? :^) – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 08:14, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

You can sort by progress. --NE2 10:22, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

No you can't – clicking the sorting button gives me a JavaScript error in Firefox. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 06:12, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Now you can - one of the cells was missing. --NE2 08:14, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Looks like there will be a gap on US 24

Colorado signs US 24 on the old surface road to the Kansas state line, but Kansas signs it on I-70. It's probably best to leave this as a gap. --NE2 23:36, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Gap in US 61 too?

On US 61 south at Turrell, Arkansas, it's supposed to enter I-55 south. But the recent reconstruction eliminated this ramp, and as best as I can tell there is no signage in this area pointing to I-55 south. The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department doesn't care how US 61 goes, as they don't deal with overlaps. So I've left a gap in the US 61 relation. --NE2 09:19, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Detoured, former and decommissioned alignments

If there are a limited amount of signs for a route that has been decommissioned for at least ten years or has never been legislated as such, should a relation or ref tags be used to mark that route along its former alignment nevertheless?

A user and I had an argument recently over how to classify US 1 Business in Trenton. He insists on having the relation follow the route of US 1 Alternate, which was decommissioned in 1978; I, however, had it along the route legislated by the New Jersey Department of Transportation before his revisions to US 206. The relation is currently set to end at the New Jersey-Pennsylvania line, and the route, except where it runs along US 206 (along which, except for one sign at the Brunswick Circle, there exist no signs for any bannered spur of US 1). CrystalWalrein 02:28, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

See our page on disputes, which describes the "on the ground rule". There it's talking specifically about languages, but in my experience it's the general rule for anything else. This certainly keeps us from arguing between differing definitions (in some cases the state disagrees with itself). Here, there certainly are signs south of the Brunswick Circle, for instance at the CR 653 split. If and when the signs (which, at least at the circle, were presumably posted by NJDOT) disappear, then we can change the relation and ref tags. According to [1], NJDOT signs US 1 Business "as a service to the public".

By the way, NJDOT does not "legislate" any routes. The state legislature at one point defined the routes by law, but the 1953 renumbering ended this. They keep track of routes with the straight line diagrams, but in this case the signage department chose not to follow the SLD. --NE2 19:09, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Redoing the 2d/3d US Highways sections

I think we should completely redo the entire setup for the 2d/3d US Highways into the same format that the Interstate Highway relations page is using with separate sections for SuperRelations and the normal Relations. Because right now IMO, it doesn't look good at all & the sorting is useless imo.

With my recommendation to convert it to the same format as the Interstates page, we'd separate the 2d US Highways (including US-101) into ten digit blocks. So, we would have 0x, 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 6x, 7x, 8x, and 9x. US-101 would be placed in the 9x section.

As for the US Highways higher that 101 that are currently in the 102-730 section, we should separate them into 100's sections. Example: 1xx, 2xx, 3xx, 4xx, 5xx, 6xx, 7xx

Opinions? --Rickmastfan67 08:26, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Would would be the point? (I do agree that, now that everything is complete, sorting is useless.) --NE2 11:55, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, it would make it easier to read for one thing. Especially if you can see a SuperRelation section right in-front of the normal relations for each section/state. This will allow people to easily be able to identify the SuperRelation that they need to add a new relation to IF they need to do more splitting up in the future. Because, who knows if somebody will need to split up another relation in the future once they clean up the entire route after adding any state route relations that multiplex. That and bridges and other separated segments of the routes. --Rickmastfan67 02:11, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

So, nobody else has an opinion on this (besides NE2)? Because tomorrow I should have some time to redo it if nobody has any major objections with it. --Rickmastfan67 02:30, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Alright, I'm going to get at least the 1-101 part overhauled right now so it's easier to read. :) --Rickmastfan67 21:15, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

All done now. --Rickmastfan67 05:44, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm working on removing the State Wiki links. I consider it a failed experiment. :( --Rickmastfan67 23:59, 13 December 2010 (UTC)